Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.

“I think it will be clear that in order to read the man’s mind, you must put away from you anything like emotion. You are there to kill him efficiently, and you should practice the detachment of the surgeon, who does not wring his hands and wail when he sees the patient on the operating table.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “Even if I prove that the other man is dishonest in his belief in the righteousness of submarine warfare or whatever it may be, the situation is not changed at all. He has a perfect right to be dishonest if he wants to.”
  2. “It is necessary in many circumstances to fight; and, in order to fight well, one needs certain quite definite qualities. In olden days I did a good deal of fencing, by which I do not mean receiving stolen goods. I mean the play of rapier and small-sword. I learned that I must be entirely concentrated on the business on hand, and that elaborate arguments purporting to prove that my opponent was a Chinaman or a heretic, were out of place.”
  3. “So long, then, as we are true to ourselves, it is as with William Schwenck Gilbert, ‘You are right and I am right and everyone of us is right.'”
  4. “Having purchased my tie and wept together about Bond street, we began to talk about the war. I said to him: ‘If I had come into this shop (or should I say store) with the firm conviction that you were a dangerous maniac, thirsting for my blood, that you were insensible to every feeling of humanity, that the fiercest and most malignant wild beasts had nothing on you (I believe that is the correct phrase) in the matter of atrocity, I do not think we should have settled this matter of the tie (or should I say neckwear) with the philosophic calm which has characterized our interview up to this point.’ I regret to say that this person was so lost to all sense of patriotism as to agree with me.”
  5. “I learned also that my best chance of defeating him was to know what he was going to do before he did it; to read his mind in his eye and his wrist.”